Nathan Liao | BA (Hons) Digital Arts Top-Up
Specialism – Environment Design / Games Designer / Game Artist / Low Poly / Stylised Art
Nathan Liao has made an incredible impact during his short time, demonstrating both creative flair and technical confidence. Specialising in stylized environment design for games, Nathan’s work is driven by a deep love for distinctive visual worlds seen in titles like Sifu, Overwatch, Valheim, and of course, the animated series Arcane.
His Final Major Project stands out as a wonderfully put together 15-second short cinematic, built in Unreal Engine 5, that shows his stylised Japanese train station environment (with a rather epic Lo-Fi beat to back). The piece blends storytelling with stylisation, showing his artistic direction—from creating realistic assets to crafting beautiful, hand-painted 3D worlds. NAthan has modelled all major assets, sculpting hero props in ZBrush and then creating seamless materials with Substance before integrating Nanite-based displacement in UE5 for finishing effects.
Nathan didn’t stop at the visuals — he created original music and ambient sounds to deepen the mood and introduced a character into the scene to deliver subtle narrative cues. He also reached out to the original concept artist that inspired the work for comments and feedback - always keen for collaboration.
The final result is a polished, emotional environment that wouldn’t look out of place in a high-end indie title or animation pipeline. With a strong eye for colour, composition, and storytelling, Nathan is clearly ready for the next step as a stylised Environment artist in the games industry.
CONTACT ME
Artstation : https://www.artstation.com/morinathan
BELOW
Some more examples from the FMP, including some of the Asset and prop creation.
